Like many of the Ultrabooks announced in Taipei, the ATIV Book 9 Plus is a marriage of MacBook Air and rMBP. You get a form factor that's very similar to the 13-inch MBA, but with a display that's clearly aimed at the more expensive rMBP. Where the ATIV Book 9 Plus falls in pricing will be very interesting to see.

Internally, there's a familiar refrain: Core i5-4200U (Haswell ULT), DDR3L and an SSD. Like the ATIV Q, the SSD in this case is one of Samsung's own - the MZNTD128HAGM, a 6Gbps SATA M.2 drive. The machine ships with an integrated 55Wh battery and weighs 1.39 kg. Samsung claims up to 12 hours of battery life.

The notebook looked good in person. I'm a fan of the hidden SD card reader with spring loaded door. Just like we saw with the ATIV Q, the ATIV Book 9 Plus was running Windows 8 but I fully expect that it's meant for Windows 8.1's improved handling of high DPI displays.

No, the 15" rMBP has a discrete nvidia chip. I think you mean the 13" rMBP which has an Intel HD4000 GPU. This Samsung has 1.4X the pixels of the rMBP and a slightly more powerful Intel HD4400 GPU. Many are waiting for the Haswell 13" rMBP as the current rev. struggled with graphics performance if you recall Anand's review last year.Reply

Yeah but the graphics kernel and desktop composition in Windows is lightyears ahead of what is in OSX. I highly doubt haswell will have trouble composing the screen even at this resolution. Haswell should be capable of driving 4K displays with ease.Reply